Tech’s immediacy turns an Uber wait into an eternity.<p>Four minutes doesn’t sound like a long time to wait for a car, right? But what if the app on your wife’s phone had just showed your Uber driver as only three minutes away? Suddenly his arrival is pushed back. Then another minute passes. Still …

It has to do with your sound card, your ears, and your brain<p>Once there was the dress; now there’s Yanny or Laurel.<p>This audio illusion, which went viral after first appearing on Reddit, has the internet torn. After all, what kind of monster doesn’t hear <i>Yanny</i>?<p>When <i>Verge Science</i> listened to it this …

Technology and ethics have always been at odds with each other. Ask around: many feel that technology companies have no ethics.<p>Social media fuels that debate from time to time, spreading fake news, extremism and more. But an AI presentation by Google at its developer conference this year may have …

Google is trying to stay ahead of the ethical and philosophical pitfalls of its new Duplex platform<p>Following widespread outcry over the ethical dilemmas raised by Google’s new Duplex system, which lets artificial intelligence mimic a human voice to make appointments, Google has clarified in a …

Uber today announced it was shutting down its self-driving car test program in Arizona, this a mere two months after the company began investigating a fatal incident involving an autonomous vehicle and a pedestrian.<p><b>What it means:</b> For the 200 or so Uber employees working on the Tempe-based project …

Apple and Volkswagen are officially in the car business together.<p>That's according to a multiple news reports published on Wednesday night, which outline some details of Apple's plan to turn some Volkswagen passenger vans into self-driving vehicles.<p>Apple will equip the German automaker's T6 …

Autonomous vehicles really don't know how to switch lanes as well as people do. They tend to rely on either relatively static data models that are difficult to study in the thick of traffic, or are basic enough that the car might only change lanes when it's absolutely necessary -- that is, hardly …

Thinking about artificial intelligence can help clarify what makes us human—for better and for worse.<p>Precisely how and when will our curiosity kill us? I bet you’re curious. A number of scientists and engineers fear that, once we build an artificial intelligence smarter than we are, a form of A.I. …

Nobody <i>wants</i> to fly economy, but if you’re the CEO of an airline, you should probably do it at least once. Yet American Airlines CEO Doug Parker seems unwilling to admit whether or not he’s flown his airline’s newest economy product.<p>In January, prominent airline blogger Gary Leff reported that …

When most platforms wouldn't even allow this company to advertise on their sites, the founder had to get creative.<p>2 min read<p><i>This is an episode of our podcast</i> Problem Solvers<i>. Each week, an entrepreneur reveals how they overcame an unexpected problem in their business -- and were happier and more</i> …

U.S. retail is definitely not dying, but it is certainly evolving at an accelerated rate. Week by week, the brick-and-mortar retail landscape is changing rapidly—and, in some cases, belatedly—in response to shifts in how and where consumers shop. As I noted earlier in May, forward-thinking mall …

Walmart has ended a service where customers could ring up their own purchases, showing that old habits die hard even in the digital age.<p>The retailer had offered its so-called "Mobile Scan & Go" technology in about 150 Walmart stores, after a successful rollout across its Sam's Club warehouse chain. …

Soon after Walmart announced its $16 billion (Rs1 lakh crore) acquisition of Flipkart, its shares tanked in early hours of trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Investors feared that a loss-making Flipkart would dent Walmart’s earnings.<p>Walmart admitted that this deal would pinch in the …

Rolling out to US users in the coming weeks<p>Facebook is launching a new home services feature in its Marketplace section for US users. Marketplace is a separate commerce section on Facebook that allows users to connect with one another to buy, sell, and give away items. Recently, it’s even added a …

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with members of the European Parliament today (May 22) in what was billed as a “meeting” but ended up being more of an awkward hearing, in which the executive took a public lashing but was also let off the hook from many tough, detailed questions.<p>In one particularly …

Twitter is recruiting publishers to help it move deeper into programmatic advertising and challenge the duopoly.<p>The company has set up a cryptic landing page asking publishers to sign up for a pilot ad program called Twitter Timeline Ads. Similar to advertising programs like Google's Display …

Netflix’s market value increased to about $150 billion today.<p>Netflix’s market value increased to about $150 billion today; it is now worth more than Comcast.<p>Comcast, the largest U.S. cable company, has been losing video subscribers as people cut the cord and move to streaming services ... such as …

It probably won’t look like this for long.<p>The media landscape used to be straightforward: Content companies — studios — made stuff — TV shows and movies — and sold it to pay TV distributors, who sold it to consumers.<p>Now things are up for grabs: Netflix buys stuff from the studios, but it’s making …

WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama formally announced on Monday a multiyear production deal with Netflix in which he and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, will produce television shows and films for the streaming service.<p>The deal will give Mr. Obama an international television platform …

In case you had any doubts that original content is a big priority at Netflix, Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos estimated that 85 percent of the company’s total spending is going to new shows and and movies.<p>That’s according to Variety, which reported on Sarandos’ remarks today at …

FX and Hulu will air a weekly television series by The New York Times.<p>The show's name, "The Weekly," links it to the Times' popular podcast "The Daily." With this new move into TV, The Times is hoping to replicate its success in audio.<p>The distribution deals were announced on Wednesday.<p>FX and the …

SEATTLE (AP) — Amazon's decision to market a powerful face recognition tool to police is alarming privacy advocates, who say the tech giant's reach could vastly accelerate a dystopian future in which camera-equipped officers can identify and track people in real time, whether they're involved in …

When General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect in the European Union on May 25, it's not just those companies across the proverbial pond who will be impacted.<p>Any American companies that work with customers in the EU will need to make sure their data storage practices are compliant …

“When you see what they see, it’s going to be very terrifying for everyone.”<p>Facebook, under massive public pressure for years of privacy breaches, won praise earlier this month when it said people would soon be able to “flush your history whenever you want.”<p>Except the new feature won’t <i>exactly</i> do …

Europe's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy laws are about to go into effect, and one of the key rules is that companies must provide "clear and transparent" notice about how your data will be used. Google has done just that, releasing its upcoming privacy policy that explains …

At Dorchester Collection of ultra-luxury hotels, we use big data and analytics to help us improve our guest offerings and marketing. Our tool, Metis, analyzes data from online reviews and social media to uncover problems and opportunities. But, as the Dorchester Collection’s director of global …

Consuming the written word is exceptionally good for people.<p>Twenty six percent of adults in the United States have not read even a portion of a book within the last year. It's an unfortunate reality considering that researchers have found that consuming the written word is exceptionally good for …

Contemporary research shows that happy people tend to be are more productive, more creative, more connected and more likable.<p>Who wouldn't want to be more productive, more creative in their lives and in their business.<p>Here are 16 habits of exceptionally likeable people and you can emulate their …

A year by year economic history of the Roman Empire might seem as impossible to reconstruct as the lost 107 books of Livy’s history of Rome. Yet something close to such a record has now been retrieved from the unlikeliest of places — a glacier in central Greenland.<p>The record is written not in Latin …

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - If a new European law restricting what companies can do with people's online data went into effect tomorrow, almost 1.9 billion Facebook Inc users around the world would be protected by it. The online social network is making changes that ensure the number will be much …

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Shares of Spotify Technology SA ended up 12.9 percent on their first day of trade on the New York Stock Exchange, a smooth debut that could pave the way for other companies looking to go public without the aid of Wall Street underwriters.<p>Spotify shares opened at …

The <b>Facebook crisis</b> has opened up a debate about <b>data</b> and <b>regulations</b>; <b>China</b> will never catch the <b>US</b> in <b>AI</b>; the 10 <b>machine learning</b> algorithms you need to …

Mashable has agreed to sell itself to the old school magazine publisher Ziff Davis for $50 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.<p>That's considerably less than Mashable's most recent valuation of $250 million in 2016, according to the WSJ (although Pitchbook pegs Mashable's valuation at the …

Prospects for a 2018 initial public offering by the high-profile publisher now appear remote<p>Digital publisher BuzzFeed is on track to miss its revenue target this year by a significant amount, the latest sign that troubles in the online-ad business are making it tough for new-media upstarts to live …

Thursday was a rough day for digital media. Within hours, a series of reports, some unofficial and others confirmed, underscored a bitter reality that’s become increasingly harder to avoid: Not even the biggest digital media startups are immune from the seismic shifts in digital advertising …

Google announced a notable update to YouTube Kids this week, one that gives parents a range of tools to tailor the app for their kids.<p>Among the new features is one that lets parents create individual profiles for each of their offspring. They can set each kid up with their own passcode to keep …